


Blood Blossom

by CookieBlitz



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Bullying, Gen, Incomplete, M/M, some other stuff i forgot about whoops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 11:14:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieBlitz/pseuds/CookieBlitz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You find it a bit silly, the way he looks at you. His red eyes look into your soul, your very essence, but…he doesn’t. Sometimes you think he sees you, while the rest he just wishes you weren’t there.</p><p>It’s a strange feeling, to be hated by your best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Another old thing, significantly less so but still aged and, sadly, forgotten.
> 
> I only have the two small parts I wrote at the time, but otherwise this will remain incomplete unless I feel like picking it back up, which is highly unlikely. 
> 
> Again, apologies in advance for any mistakes.

You find it a bit silly, the way he looks at you. His red eyes look into your soul, your very essence, but…he doesn’t. Sometimes you think he sees you, while the rest he just wishes you weren’t there.

It’s a strange feeling, to be hated by your best friend.

You think it’d be comical even if it weren’t for the fact that he seems to shun you on his off days, and can’t get enough of you on his good ones. If he has good ones. He can’t seem to remember you most of the time, but he’s always desperately clinging to you, begging you not to leave his side, and you think it would almost be sweet if it wasn’t so sick.

Your name is John Egbert, and you’re not sure what to think anymore.

You think it’s safe to say that Dave hasn’t always been this way. (You don’t think anyone could be.) What has remained true to facts is his pale skin, his ash white hair, sun burnt at the tips, and his glowing red, amber eyes. The eyes that always lit up when they saw you (though he would try to deny it) and could recognize you in an instant. The eyes that didn’t dull over whenever you had to go do something, or whenever he was bored (which was most of the time), or whenever he was tired (which was always).

What was constant through the years was that it seemed like he just couldn’t make any friends.

You think it may have started when everyone else first say him: the Texan boy who hid himself behind too big shades, behind his big brother who watched all the other girls and boys with a cold stare. You think it may have started when his pale pale skin gave away his big black bruises too easily, when his red red eyes accented his puffy skin from crying.

You think it stopped when you stood by his side.

You think they got the idea when you were the first one to go up to him and not offer him a knuckle sandwich. They knew, because you would play in the sandpit with him with all your toys that made his bright eyes shine with curiosity and wonder and shock. It made you him your best friend and you would fight anyone for that.

 

 

That was in elementary school, when you were the big shot who had sprung up from the ground in your growth spurt called puberty, and it put you a little above everyone else.

When middle school came around, everyone else got their turn to touch the clouds while you sniffed the flowers. When middle school came around, they realized you weren’t as big as they thought. They realized that, but didn’t attack you.

They went for Dave.

They went at him for weeks on end while he sported their trophies. His delicate skin was covered in flowers of blue, black, and violet blooms. Each week his bouquet grew and grew until you couldn’t find an inch of his skin that wasn’t adorned with the decoration. It grew until he couldn’t care for his garden anymore.

Dave left school.

He convinced his Bro to let him be home schooled. Dave had told you about it, about how he wasn’t going to let him until Dave showed him his pocketful (and more) of posies from his admirers.

Dave said he couldn’t get him out of there fast enough.

 

 

Dave never came back to your school. He stayed home for the remaining three years until high school. He stayed home while you tried to update Rose and Jade about what was going on. He stayed home while you worried until school forced you to get back to work.

When you saw him during opening orientation, you couldn’t get to him fast enough. The few times you had actually met up while he was gone had taken it’s toll on you and you were Strider deprived.

You missed your best bro.

But it wasn’t the Dave you knew that looked back at you with a blank expression with his shades eclipsing his eyes. He had changed and you weren’t ready for it.

While you bubbled as you greeted him, he mumbled a “Hey”, then looked away. Your energy simmered with your spirit.

He ended up agreeing to sit with you and Jade and Rose during the welcoming ceremony. They were relieved to finally see him again, but it was silently agreed amongst you three that, yes, he had changed, but for better or for worse, was yet to be seen.

He seemed to talk fine around the girls, and your fake smile hurt your muscles and your heart.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is where the bullying comes in, and though I'm hardly graphic at all, I don't want to give anyone a nasty surprise, so if this kind of stuff bothers you, please proceed with caution.

When you think of all the times you’ve run around the school, your face twists into a sad little smile. A smile that shouldn’t exist because no one should have to go through what you do. No one should live like you.

No one should live in fear.

When you returned to that ancient school district with the tiny class size but cramped campus, you thought everyone had forgotten about you. You had prayed to every non existent god you could think of while your Bro wondered why you were still up. You had hoped and begged that you wouldn’t have to relive that trauma from sixth grade. 

When Bro found out about it, when he forced you to fess up after you had started to make sure every inch of your skin was covered when it was eighty degrees outside, when you refused to let him see. He found out when you cut him out of your life.

You still wonder how he never noticed all the markings when you were in first grade. You wonder when humanity became so cruel to pitch five year old boys against each other to see who came out with the shinier toy and the biggest smile. When the one left in the dust was expected to become a throne to sit on. You wonder how it all started, but consider how it stopped.

It stopped with John.

John stopped the bullies like a gust of wind unsettling an advancing fleet. A fleet that carried guns and canons and death threats attacking the fisherman whose ship sank with worry. John had uprooted you life and planted you a new one.

One where everything wasn’t all shriveled and rotten, where every window wasn’t obscured by soot, where the air was clean of smoke and unease. 

John had turned away the armada and filled your sail with renewed hope.

Hope that you wouldn’t be alone anymore, left in your apartment while your Bro did God knows what to earn you scraps of food. Hope that the darkness wouldn’t engulf you in your dreams. Hope that you could live.

And he gave you friends. He gave you Jade and Rose and a second family for your broken one. He swapped out all the broken and rusty gears with shiny new parts that sparkled in the sun. He oiled your life and made it flow. He gave you hope and purpose and a new identity. 

You name is Dave Strider and you think you’re in love.

 

 

The ground was glad to see you, it’s long forgotten friend. The asphalt kissed your face with dirt and stone, blessing you. Air decided to abandon you in order to grab the streamers for your welcome back party while you choked on your existence. You choked on all the bitter memories that arose with the familiarity of the situation and tried to hold back your sobs of agony and woe. Fingers yanked on your hair, testing the strength of their relationship to your fear and pain. Feet pummeled you as they danced a jig of merriment at your return.

Your return to this hellhole.

Coughing rattled your frame as you tried to stand, but your knees protested and insisted that the wall behind you provide support instead. Your feet tripped and tangled together, apologizing profusely to your derriere. The back of your cranium connected with the old brick behind you in a quiet fist bump of accepting your fate as the punching bag of this rotten school.

The sun decided to check in on your, beating down on your face with glee as the rays bounced off your broken shades and reflected into the face of your bullies (“friends”, as they insisted with sinister smirks and half lidded glares). Your voice had decided to save it’s energy until the real show began, when the finale ended with your soliloquy of half mangled moans and groans of pain.

The curtain fell on the scene before you could exit and now you’re left under the weight of it all. The weight that, once again, you’re hated and despised not so quietly. The weight that your life is falling to shambles and there’s no one left except the sorry excuse for your hide. Your freakishly pale albino hide that begged to have an inch of your life handed to you. 

Your life that you wanted to end.

Everything hurts too much to move, so you curl up with your rags and broken existence and pray to everything you don’t believe in that maybe you won’t wake up tomorrow and it’ll finally be over.

That you'll finally be okay.


End file.
